Tag Archives: kayak

Kayaking one morning, I found a piece of driftwood floating in the lake that I thought would look good as a free-form garden sculpture. I could just picture Creeping Jenny crawling all over it.

Hoisting it onto the back of my kayak required strength I didn’t have, so I tied a rope around it to drag it home.

What a lesson that was.

Paddling a straight line is easy by myself. But I struggled with the weight of this big, weird-shaped piece of driftwood in tow. The heaviest two feet of it dragged underwater like an anchor holding me back. I tacked back and forth so much, it was hard to tell if I was making any forward progress at all.

I paddled hard and gave my body a good workout. Then it dawned on me: sometimes life is like dragging dead weight. The burdens we carry get heavy. We may not be able to see the progress we’re making, but we are strengthened in our struggle.

And the burdensome things that slow us down are the things that God will turn into something beautiful…even more beautiful than the garden sculpture I envisioned.